The Fourth Noble Truth is that of the Way leading to the Cessation of Dukkha (Dukkhanirodhagamiṇīpaṭipadā-ariyasacca). This is known as the ‘Middle Path’ (Majjhimā Paṭipadā), because it avoids two extremes: one extreme being the search for happiness through the pleasures of the senses, which is ‘low, common, unprofitable and the way of the ordinary people’; the other being the search for happiness through self-mortification in different forms of asceticism, which is ‘painful, unworthy and unprofitable.’ Having himself first tried these two extremes, and having found them to be useless, the Buddha discovered through personal experience the Middle Path ‘which gives vision and knowledge, which leads to Calm, Insight, Enlightenment, Nirvāṇa.’ This Middle Path is generally referred to as the Noble Eightfold Path (Ariya-Aṭṭaṅgika-Magga), because it is composed of eight categories or divisions:

1. Right Understanding (Sammā diṭṭhi),
2. Right Thought (Sammā saṅkappa),
3. Right Speech (Sammā vācā),
4. Right Action (Sammā kammanta),
5. Right Livelihood (Sammā ājīva),
6. Right Effort (Sammā vāyāma),
7. Right Mindfulness (Sammā sati),
8. Right Concentration (Sammā samādhi).

Practically the whole teaching of the Buddha, to which he devoted himself during 45 years, deals in some way or other with this Path. He explained it in different ways and in different words to different people, according to the stage of their development and their capacity to understand and follow him. But the essence of those many thousand discourses scattered in the Buddhist Scriptures is found in the Noble Eightfold Path.